badly pressed pleats ruins effect

[M. A. C. Newsome]

This kilt was box pleated, to the white stripe, as all the Seaforth kilts were. You can tell that when they pressed it, they pressed out the box pleats and pressed them as ordinary knife pleats.

Yes, it can be fixed with a little time and effort. Maybe someone will get a good deal out of it.

[Dixiecat]

This kilt was box pleated, to the white stripe, as all the Seaforth kilts were. You can tell that when they pressed it, they pressed out the box pleats and pressed them as ordinary knife pleats.

Yes, it can be fixed with a little time and effort. Maybe someone will get a good deal out of it.

Gotcha. I forgot that military box pleats aren't actually box pleats, but folded over knife pleats. Whoops.

[M. A. C. Newsome]

Gotcha. I forgot that military box pleats aren't actually box pleats, but folded over knife pleats. Whoops.

Actually, they are actually box pleats, actually. :-)

They are simply box pleats made with 8 yards of cloth, rather than four.

An historic box pleated kilt, made from 4 yards of cloth, has wide box pleats which have little to no overlap and the pleats are equal depth on either side.

As you increase the yardage, you end up with more pleats, and more narrow pleats. There will be more overlap on the interior. And while side of the pleat will be deeper (due to the increased amount of cloth) the other side of the pleat will actually become more shallow.

So when you do this with a full 8 yards, the box pleats do indeed "look like" what we would expect a normal modern knife pleated kilt to look like, with the pleats twisted around. But it is, in fact, exactly what a box pleated kilt looks like when made from 8 yards of cloth.

[Pleater]

I think that to get it right you would need to dampen it, spraying with a fine mist several times, and then gently iron the inside to remove the folds which are in the wrong place, as high up as possible.

When the folds have been removed, start to reform the pleats, tacking vertically to place the outer fold in the right place relevant to the white stripe, and pressing each pleat separately using a sleeve board.

Only then could you reform the whole line of pleats correctly, baste them in place and press without the folds being distorted.

It would be a labour of love, but that photo shows pressing which is positively cruel!

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

[Barb T]

Well, as my mother would say, that really takes the cake. It's a stunner! Hard to imagine that someone could think that was what the pleats were supposed to look like!!

[Michael Flemming]

Like "what did you sit in, mate?"

[Dixiecat]

Actually, they are actually box pleats, actually. :-)

They are simply box pleats made with 8 yards of cloth, rather than four.

An historic box pleated kilt, made from 4 yards of cloth, has wide box pleats which have little to no overlap and the pleats are equal depth on either side.

As you increase the yardage, you end up with more pleats, and more narrow pleats. There will be more overlap on the interior. And while side of the pleat will be deeper (due to the increased amount of cloth) the other side of the pleat will actually become more shallow.

So when you do this with a full 8 yards, the box pleats do indeed "look like" what we would expect a normal modern knife pleated kilt to look like, with the pleats twisted around. But it is, in fact, exactly what a box pleated kilt looks like when made from 8 yards of cloth.

In my world of sewing terms, military box pleating is a kind of misnomer. A box pleat is defined as two opposite pleats meeting. In my quest to get a grasp on what I was trying to say, I checked out these threads: http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f...sporran-41024/
http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f...80/index2.html
Both threads confirm that military box pleats are folded back knife pleats with the main pleats running in the same direction. HOWEVER, I can see though that a small 'box' is created by the folding of the knife pleat which is the sneaky way of validating the definition of box pleat.